


one word, no pause, no stressed syllable

by wintercourse



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Illustrated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 10:26:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3974665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercourse/pseuds/wintercourse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You look a bit like coffee, and you taste a little like me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one word, no pause, no stressed syllable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> the prompt was for all the betas (but especially jade and dave) giving davesprite some post game love and validation!! which was super great bc im a sucker for davesprite angst/fluff. i hope you like it xx

 

 

Rose is the first to get to him, the same as it ever was. They sat in the scraped out guts of a universe (battlefield) together, and that isn't something you forget. His stomach would drop in fear if he still had one, his blood would run cold if it hadn't been replaced with electrical pulses and streams of code, because he _left_ her. He left her for dead in some meaningless fucked up timeline and she remembers, she knows. They spent too long together, degrading with the world around them, so she's seen him flayed wide open like a pinned down specimen. Until he left her all alone, the game shoved new software and wings and a fucking sword right into his open wounds, and she had the pleasure of dying. But now she doesn't glare, doesn't turn away; she just grabs his hand, hard. Her nails leave tiny half moons in his palm, like the half-eaten one they spent their months on. Later he looks at the imprints. They spell YOU SAVED US, and his (functionally useless) heart lurches.

-

John says his name wrong - Dave _Sprite_. It sounds strange spat out like that, in two words. He hears the space and the breath and the beat of time between the syllables and it's just so fucking _wrong_. But he measures the pause all the same, tries to think about how miniscule it is in the midst of all the time they spend together now. They waste time like only teenagers can, fill the air with words and words and words until it comes naturally. Their interactions flow easier than they did in the three years travelling through the medium's sock drawer, better than they have since John died for the first time and took Davesprite's timeline with him. The distance between them closes, and eventually so does the pause between words. Davesprite. The syllables fold together. It sounds a lot like I SEE YOU, and he lets out a breath of stale air he's been holding for years.

 

 

Dave's spent too long calling him a cheap knockoff, and he's spent far too long agreeing. It's hard sometimes, lying side by side with a living breathing embodiment of what could have been. But some things are easy. Like judging each other's reactions, guessing their feelings, even finishing each other's sentences in a strange maybe-sort-of-ironic rendition of a normal couple. They treat it like that, like performance art, for a while - tag team to get under John's skin, play at affection to confuse Rose, read each other aloud to shatter any semblance of subtlety. Never genuine, never really caring. Until eventually the needling turns bitter, the faux reverence resentful, and they realise simultaneously (always in sync, always in perfect time) that maybe they still have some shit to work out.

Hating yourself is easy, forgiving yourself is hard, and doing it all by proxy is just fucking surreal. They both have guilt, and ten pints worth of anger (how much blood is in Dave's body - how much binary in his), but eventually they carve it out of each other. Eventually the jabs turn playful, the narcissistic affection almost genuine, and they realise simultaneously (always together, in time and close shared space) that they don't have to be different to be distinct. They don't have to justify their seperation, step anyone through the gulf of space between them. They start to take delight in the cliche - someone you can turn to, someone who always understands, someone who knows you better than you know yourself. He starts to appreciate the wings, the eye searing orange, because even if he's not The Real Dave, he's The Real Davesprite. One word, no emphasis, no stressed syllable. So yeah, its hard. But they share a nod that says THANK YOU and a glance that says I'M SORRY, and this time it goes both ways.

-

Jade is different. She always has been, different than anyone, bigger and fiercer and raw like a fucked up nerve ending. But without a looming threat, in a room that isn't made of gold or hurtling through a vacuum at warp speed, her manic energy just seems, well, kind of sad. Her tough edges and sanded down planes are so structured, so guarded, so out of place in this new soft playpen of a universe. Its kind of stressing him out, honestly, because he feels like he can relate, but he doesn't know how to approach her anymore. She's always hated strangers touching her, and isn't that what he is now? Ditching her on the ship, MIA for the big finale, sneaking into their world (theirs, _hers_ , never his) and skirting round the edges. Avoiding her for god knows how long. It was Dave to bear the brunt of her anger, after all, not him, when she went dark and crackling and really _really_ pissed off - his turn must be coming.

So when she seeks him out, he faces the confrontation with an air of ripping off a bandaid. He's been picking at it for a while, but trying to sort through his own guilt just exposes weak flesh, and he can't pull at anything without ripping up a tangle of nerves and sinew, laid under his surface like maps. _You are here_ , in the roundabout. Circling round and round like, you know, a fucking crow. She's in front of him now, and he braces for impact - a literal one if her treatment of Dave is any indication. But it never comes. She just smiles at him, just the way she used to. He gets hit with a wave of nostalgia, so fond of her gleaming canines and scrunched up nose that he feels like he'll swoon right fucking there. Her smile reads I'VE MISSED YOU, and a split second later she says it out loud.

-

She does yell at him eventually. With a breakup that messy, it was never going to be easy. If he was hoping for a do-over, a clean slate, he never gets it - she screams herself hoarse a few days later, and he spends another week avoiding her like the plague, like she's a time bomb. In the end, Dave is the one who pushes him back to her, tells him to stop being a fucking loser and just talk it out already. It takes a while, but they get there. It took a lot longer with Dave, anyway.

The three of them are piled together in his room, a perfect snapshot to match all the ones on his walls, when he realizes he doesn't have to tiptoe around them anymore. He isn't a spare - he's the real fucking deal. And if he gets to spend more moments like this, then the orange is definitely worth it.

 

**Author's Note:**

> the drabble part is eh, and i feel kinda bad for skimming the jade/davesprite confrontation cause that is like... the shit i live for tbh. but all my attempts were too angsty for these uber fluffy pics shrug


End file.
